Good morning, and thanks so much for the opportunity to present before you today.
The Social Planning Council of Winnipeg is a community-based organization. We provide leadership in improving social conditions through effective solutions, progressive policy community development, and partnership.
We've been working to develop solutions for combatting poverty here in Winnipeg since 1919, so we're one of the organizations that came out of the social movements around the general strike here in Winnipeg. We have a long history of working in these areas and are really pleased to have the opportunity to present before you.
I know the work that you're doing is quite broad, and in my remarks today, I'd like to focus on just one area of the different areas that your research is focused on here. I'm going to be looking at housing, and particularly the circumstances around housing as a poverty issue in Winnipeg.
Winnipeg is a city with unique challenges and resources, but what's applicable in Winnipeg does have relevance right across the country.
Housing is the largest expense for people living in poverty. One of the things that I do as a community animator is that I work with a number of coalitions of groups and organizations working on poverty in Manitoba. One of them is Make Poverty History Manitoba. We bring together about a hundred different community organizations, and consistently when you talk to community groups, the number one need people have is housing. It comes right to the top of the list. That's not surprising, because for most people living in poverty, that's their largest expense.
In the 2011 census data, 37% of renters in Winnipeg lived in housing that took up more than 30% of their income, and 50% lived in housing that met one of CMHC's core housing criteria of being in poor condition, overcrowded, or unaffordable. It's a really important issue for low-income people here in Winnipeg.
In recent years in Winnipeg, we've had this kind of long trajectory. In Winnipeg, like most other cities across Canada, since the 1990s, there's been a decline of availability of rental housing. There's been some good news actually in the last few years. There has been more construction of rental housing since about 2013, and you're starting to see some pick up of availability. Vacancy rates have moderated, which is really good news.
Unfortunately, the housing that is available often is housing that's unaffordable for low-income people. It's really interesting if you look at it by quartile. This is probably true in other cities as well as across Canada. The housing that's being built is nowhere near what's available for low-income families. It's difficult for even moderate income or middle-income families to afford a lot of the rental construction that is available.
We're finding the housing that is available at the cheapest quartile of housing often has vacancy rates less than half of what's available at the higher more expensive quartiles of housing. This problem is particularly acute when you look at particular types of housing, and the housing that's most in need. For example, in Winnipeg, the fastest growing portions of our population are newcomers coming here often with very large families.
At the Social Planning Council, we've been working very closely with a lot of the refugee families that are recently being settled from Syria and other places. They're coming with very large families, six or seven people often in the family. That means we need larger bedroom sizes.
Indigenous Manitobans are the next fastest-growing population in Winnipeg with extended family sizes, different family structures, and sometimes larger family sizes as well.
We're finding that there's very low availability for three-bedroom rental units in Winnipeg. The numbers from the October 2015 CMHC survey show that for affordable three-bedroom units, there was a vacancy rate of only 0.7%. I did the calculations for that and what that show is that there were approximately four affordable three-bedroom units in all of Winnipeg. Thinking about all the families coming to settle in Winnipeg and make their homes here, making it affordable is a real challenge.
Similarly, we found there were only approximately 27 affordable bachelor units in Winnipeg, using those numbers. At the same time, the October 2015 street census found that 1,400 individuals were experiencing homelessness in Winnipeg, but there were only 27 affordable units.
There's a real disparity. A lot of it is because the federal government disengaged from housing for a number of decades. We're really pleased the federal government started to reinvest last year. In the 2016 budget, they started to put back housing with a short-term, two-year commitment. What we really need is a longer-term commitment. We need a 10-year housing plan and a long-term housing strategy to rebuild our housing and social housing stock across Canada. Really, we need at least $2 billion to be spent annually to start to rebuild that housing stock, and the priority should be given to social housing.
One of the problems we have seen with the investment in affordable housing agreement here in Manitoba is that it doesn't allow for investment in social housing. It's geared primarily towards construction of affordable housing. Again, it's those deep subsidies that are needed for a lot of the families coming here.
There are opportunities with CMHC. They've made about $18 billion in profit over the last 10 years. If that money were reinvested back into social housing stock, then we could make a serious dent in the housing need here in Manitoba and across Canada.
The other major problem is around repairs. A lot of the existing housing in Manitoba is in need of repair. This is particularly the case with social housing. There's a backlog of approximately $500 million that needs to be spent to bring up the social housing stock in Manitoba. Canada has committed $33 million over two years, but a longer-term commitment is needed to help erase that gap.
I'd also like to say that the backlog for repair on Manitoba first nations housing is even greater. Our primary focus at the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg is on housing here in Winnipeg, but we understand that there is a $2-billion deficit on first nations housing in Manitoba alone. We know these problems are interconnected. I did some research working with the Eagle Urban Transition Centre, a group that helps indigenous people coming to Winnipeg. It helps them find housing and navigate the system.
We found that there are a lot of people who are leaving poor housing conditions on first nations, where there is overcrowding and deteriorating housing, or they're being flooded out of their homes. They come to Winnipeg and they're finding that there isn't good housing here either. Housing is unaffordable and they don't have the supports to navigate the system. We need to see that these problems are interconnected.
There also needs to be flexibility across Canada. The housing market in Winnipeg is not the same as in hotter markets like Toronto or Vancouver. There are different housing needs. We need to recognize that one size is not going to fit all right across the country. There needs to be flexibility in how the programs are rolled out.
We know that here in Manitoba there have been some problems with housing that's been constructed according to deadline, and as a result, the housing that gets built isn't always what's needed in terms of the right time, the right space, or the family type.
I just want to say one more thing. I talked a lot about the bricks and mortar of housing. We also recognize that housing is an income issue. People live in poor housing because they have insufficient incomes to afford good-quality housing. We can do more around income-support programs as well.
Thank you.